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This article I wrote about the national setbacks suffered by organized labor was published on the national website Front Page Magazine this morning:

Early in 2012, labor unions began a major political offensive aimed at regaining political initiative after a number of high-profile setbacks in 2010 and 2011. Focusing their efforts in Michigan and Wisconsin, two Midwestern states with strong union bases, their costly efforts to roll back efforts to challenge their power ended up costing them, leaving them worse off than when the year started.

In Wisconsin, labor unions poured thousands of people and millions of dollars into recall efforts to keep the GOP-held legislature and Governor from challenging their lock on state government. When the smoke cleared, Governor Scott Walker, along with most of the targeted legislators, survived recall campaigns. Efforts by labor unions to end Republican control of the Wisconsin legislature were short-lived as Republicans made good their recall losses by adding to their majority in the Wisconsin House and regaining control of the Senate in the November elections.

In Michigan, efforts by labor unions to lock in their power and blast their opponents out of power fell short. Their main effort, campaigning for a constitutional amendment that was aimed at keeping the state from enacting right-to-work legislation, failed by nearly twenty points on Election Day. Expensive efforts to target state legislators also fell short, including spending nearly a million dollars to topple the Republican House Speaker.

Emboldened by these victories, Michigan Republicans responded by pushing through right-to-work legislation, which ends the ability of labor unions to compel employees to pay union dues as a condition of employment in both private and public sector workplaces, following a move by Indiana, which became the first “Rust Belt” state to adopt right-to-work legislation earlier this year.

These political upsets were just the latest in a string of recent setbacks for organized labor which signify a growing erosion of the once-formidable power of labor unions ...